Thom Hartmann is a journalist who writes a regular commentary, the Hartmann report. He wrote this on November 20.

— The singlemost ransacked office in the Capitol on January 6th was the office of the Parliamentarian, where the Electoral College ballots were supposed to be stored. This shocking bit of information, courtesy of Johnathan Karl’s new book Betrayal, is proof positive that this wasn’t just a “protest” or a “riot”: it was an actual, naked attempt to blow up the counting of the Electoral College votes. An attempted coup. Treason. The ballots were stored, according to Karl, in “three dark and shiny mahogany boxes brought in by the parliamentarian’s office to be carried along as the senators walked over to the House. The boxes looked like relics from a time long past—each one held shut by wide leather straps with brass clasps and locked with a skeleton key.” And if those ballots, which had literally been transported there from the states under seal and over official signatures, had been destroyed there was no provision in the Constitution for what to do next. Trump would continue as president, the traitors believed, and that would be the end of the Joe Biden presidency that Steve Bannon had proclaimed he and his fellow conspirators would “kill in the crib.” Fortunately for America and the world, the ballots had been spirited away by a quick-thinking young woman who worked for the Parliamentarian and doesn’t want her name known for fear of drawing death threats from Trump’s goons. She may well have saved American democracy.